


Camisado

by jumpfall



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-12
Updated: 2012-06-12
Packaged: 2017-11-07 14:24:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/432132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jumpfall/pseuds/jumpfall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It works for him (except when it doesn't, because they don't listen, they never listen, why doesn't he have a face that people will listen to?) up until Amy Pond says, "I trust you."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Camisado

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on 2010/08/23 on livejournal.

**1.**

It's not a rule. He doesn't have rules. He gave up on rules a long, long time ago, veritable eons before he added Rose and Martha and Donna and Amy to his growing list of companions. It's a long list of people he's changed and who have changed him, ask him now and he could tell you every name, every story (not willingly, not eagerly, not every journey ends well, he knows that well enough by now) and when he lists their names like this, he is well aware of every name he's left off.

Instead, it's a motto and a slogan and a promise. If there's one thing he will vow to the people that he sees time with (sees time through, their whims and desires shape his world even as he redefines theirs), it is that he will keep the promises he makes.

He is the first one in and the last one out.

It's not a rule, because rules have exceptions and he cannot afford exceptions, not on this point. He knows what he's getting himself into (on a good day); they only know what he's told them (about the everyday) and what they've figured out for themselves (on the really bad days). He cannot afford exceptions until their knowledge surpasses his.

It works for him (except when it doesn't, because they don't listen, they never listen, why doesn't he have a face that people will listen to?) up until Amy Pond says, "I trust you." Not _'trust me'_ (he does, in a great number but not the full complement of ways), but _'I trust you',_ because they give as much as they ask of him.

-

**2.**

"Later," she says doubtfully to his ' _I'll be back for you as soon as I can, I promise_ ' – he'll fix that, too, with time; when he's through, she won't doubt it long enough for it to fall apart.

Her words aren't meant for his ears, and that's the heartbreaking part. She's entitled to a little doubt – twelve years when he'd said five minutes, four psychiatrists to be bitten right before another two-year absence – but it's a new one from her, and he doesn't like it one bit. It weighs lighter than her trust in his hands, but heavier on her soul, and _he'll_ be the one taking all the heavy things in this relationship, thank you very much.

It's not enough to simply talk to her when she's afraid he's leaving – appealing to one sense when she's deprived of an equal number could never be enough; instead, he takes her hands and gains the advantage.

"Amy, you need to start trusting me. It's never been more important."

"But you don't always tell me the truth."

"If I always told you the truth, I wouldn't need you to trust me."

He was the first one in, but he left before her, left her behind – it wasn't the wrong decision, but it wasn't the right one either; he's the Doctor, it's on him to find the third option.

For a long, long moment, he thinks it's something he won't be able to fix – but then Amy takes a step, and she walks like she can see based on the beeping of her communicator and her own instincts.

Amelia Pond would have be a wonderful fairytale name, but this is reality, where she wears it even better, giving so very much more than she's asked of him.

-

**3.**

There's a crack in her bedroom wall and an angel in her mind and she's being pulled into the earth and still she stays, until the weight of her trust is nestled carefully around his shoulders.

It's happened before, certainly – he cradles hers as he has cradled the ones that came before her, each feeling real as both the dream worlds they found themselves in felt real – but her trust is present tense, and that takes precedence right now.

She doesn't ask where he's been, so long as he's here now. She would listen if he wanted to talk about the people that came before her, but she doesn't ask, doesn't need to know.

It's something precious to be trusted so, to know that someone out there thinks he's a good guy.

-

**4.**

"I want to go home," Amy says once; only once, because she will poke and prod and nudge him into folding to her wishes, but she doesn't aim to hurt and she never makes the same mistake twice.

She shows him her wedding dress (knowingly) and her world (unintentionally), and he can't help it if he finds the latter more interesting than the former.

Fixing things (his TARDIS, machines, relationships) is easy, but holding them together is anything but. More than anything, he wants to know how Amelia Pond kept herself together after he fixed the crack in her wall.

It's not extraordinary (well, it kind of is) – it's not surprising, he means, not when he considers the seven year-old girl who wanted to know why there was a swimming pool in the library who cooked him bacon and didn't think much of adults who smiled widely and said everything was going to be okay. But he can't shake the idea that if he could just figure out how she did it (Amelia Pond, the girl who waited), he could learn from her.

He can hold everybody else together when worlds are falling apart (because worlds are fickle things and like to do that from time to time, just to get his hearts racing), but he's made a habit of leaving in the lull between the climax of the crisis and the beginning of the aftermath. He doesn't know how the permanent fixes work because that's always been somebody else's concern, and he doesn't interfere in the affairs of other peoples or planets (unless there are children crying, which there never are by that point, because that's always the first thing he makes a point of fixing.)

Amy's life doesn't make sense three-eighths of the time, but time is the Doctor's specialty, and he can feel it deep, deep in his bones that everything he wants (needs) to know lies in the larger of the fractions.

-

**5.**

"We're all stories in the end," he says to her, and he's okay with that. He's a story to all of them in the end, it's just that she's the last one he'll tell his to. That's alright, too. It's an extraordinary tale (well, it shouldn't have been) – but it's not depressing, he thinks, that he should entrust the burden of it to Amelia Pond, the seven year-old who prayed to Santa for a policeman and got him instead. Pond held onto her Raggedy Doctor for fourteen years. She holds onto things, keeps them together. She'll fix him too.

"Just make it a good one." Fairytales are meant to be exaggerated, he knows. He'll become the knight in shining armour that lived a thousand years with nothing more than his TARDIS, his sonic screwdriver, and all of time and space at his fingertips (but like all fairytales, the characters playing the role of fifth business will be slighted.) She never asked where he'd been, so long as he was there, so she doesn't know the details.

It's not going to mention that he destroyed his planet (his _people_ ) and left Pompeii to burn for the good of the world and everything else that's on him, but he isn't hoping for an accurate depiction of his character(s). Amelia won't be repeating it for his satisfaction, because he won't exist to her by then. That's not why stories subsist.

"'Cos it was, you know. It was the best."

He carries seven-year old Amelia Pond into the house and tucks her into bed. There's no point in fixing anything (his TARDIS, machines, relationships) if he's not going to do it properly.

_'Was it worth it'_ , he asked her once; only once, because he will push and challenge and mould them into something as brilliant as they spark, but he doesn't ask questions he can't handle the answer to.

_'Shut up, of course it was'_ , she told him, so he figures that for once in (this) life, he's done something right.

"I found you in words just like you knew I would, that's why you told me the story. The brand new, ancient blue box. Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue."

He's the first one (into danger) and the last one (out of the destroyed universe). It's not a rule, because he doesn't have rules. Instead, it's a motto and a slogan and a promise.

It works for him (when he doesn't expect it to, because they're so brilliant, so very brilliant, that he knows he underestimates them too much), because he asked Amy Pond to, "Remember what I told you when you were seven," and she did.

"You are late for my wedding!" she yells (well, that was earlier, but earlier can be later if he so wishes, being a Time Lord has given him a frighteningly annoying ability to disregard semantics), so he hurries out to join in the celebration.

(Because they want him as much as they need him.)


End file.
